“Last year, I helped Williams write a short first-person piece about Adam Scott for Sports Illustrated. He was far more insightful than I had ever imagined he could be,” and that’s about as good as it gets in Michael Bamberger’s book review of Steve Williams recently released Out of the Rough.

Trite, superficial and vindictiveMichael writes, “Williams was in position to write about one the greatest and most enigmatic athletes in history as no one else could, but the book is trite, superficial and vindictive,” and more’s the pity. No one else but Steve was in a position to provide the inside story of how Tiger thought and felt his way around a golf course. Although I do recall there is mention of Tiger spitting at the hole when a putt was missed.

Sadly I believe that Neil Sagebiel got it right when he wrote, “Steve Williams has a history of score-settling, which doesn't help,” and because of this an opportunity was lost. And to quote Neil, “This book was an opportunity to reveal a lot to golf fans; not just about Tiger Woods, but also by documenting a long tenure looping alongside a handful of golf greats that, besides Woods, included Raymond Floyd, Greg Norman and Adam Scott.”

Fear of law suitsI have assume there were lawyers involved on what Williams was allowed to write and perhaps explains why the book has been described as a “little thin”.Bamberger explains, “I asked (Williams) him if he ever planned to write a book about his time with Tiger Woods. He said that he had hoped to but was afraid of being sued by Woods and his people. He thought his best chance to evade the long arm of Mark Steinberg and American jurisprudence might be to get the book published in New Zealand, where he lives, and that’s what he did. Amazon brings it, digitally, to the world. It was $14.38, for this U.S. reader.

The real Steve WilliamsFor sure those who love to hate Steve are going to enjoy a field day and in fact already are with their hostile comments on numerous blogs but not, “On PGATour.com, there were none. The Tour's website was not acknowledging the book's existence. (Tour spokesman Ty Votaw told me in an email that the account "doesn’t fit our editorial philosophy.").For those who are prepared to keep an open I refer you to my post of July 07, “Steve Williams Comes Out of Retirement" where I wrote, “Guy Yucom’s ‘My Shot’ column for July features Steve Williams; photographs and all with him looking like a regular log-chopping Kiwi bloke and sharing some interesting stories.”

Here's the link to Michael Bamberger Neil Sagebiel http://armchairgolfblog.blogspot.co.nz/Quote of the Day“Williams likes to say Tiger Woods fired him. I have a different view. I believe that when Williams did some one-off work for Adam Scott in 2011 while Woods was rehabbing from surgery that was essentially quitting Woods. In Woods’s view of the world, that was sleeping with the enemy.” – Michael BambergerFOR GOLF AND TRAVEL IN NEW ZEALAND http://www.golf-new-zealand.com/TO VIEW PREVIOUS POSTS http://www.voxy.co.nz/blogs/stan-sutherland